A blog on philanthropy and nonprofit news and issues. A publication of Philanthropy Journal.

September 18, 2013

Volunteers help build brighter futures for Cambodian students

Special to
Philanthropy Journal

Jamie Amelio

From the very beginning, Caring for Cambodia (CFC), which in 10 years has built and nurtured 21 schools in Siem
Reap, Cambodia, was a bottoms-up organization.

Before the schools, before the teacher training program, before starting
to provide all our students two meals a day, a small group of women sat in my
living room filling backpacks with school supplies.Within weeks of my first visit to Siem
Reap, piles of toothbrushes, T-shirts, pencils and notebooks were spilling out
of my spare room into the hall and living room. Soon another group of
volunteers wascreating homemade
picture books in English and Khmer and laminating them so they wouldn’t wilt in
the Cambodian heat.

CFC could not exist but for the hundreds of volunteers who have donated
so much of their energy – and, in many cases, their hearts and souls – to our
cause. They likely would never have appeared at all if my family and I had not
moved to Singapore.

Singapore is a city like no other, a unique blend of East and West. On
the one hand, its infrastructure out-Wests the West in its modern design,
six-star hotels, cosmopolitan restaurants and mega casinos; on the other hand,
its Eastern culture imposes strict laws against jaywalking, littering and
chewing gum. About three-quarters of Singapore’s 4.8 million people are ethnic
Chinese, but the island also has a large foreign population, including about
100,000 U.S. expatriates.

Because wages are so low, expats tend to have a lot of help in the form
of drivers, nannies and cooks. That frees up spouses who are there because
their husbands or wives (mostly husbands, even in the 21st century) are working
for a multinational in the region. For me, it meant I had a coterie of
dedicated volunteers available.

The situation has since changed, but at the time Singapore, like the
rest of Asia, lacked a strong culture of giving. But I have watched that change
before my very eyes, though, now see people from all cultures caring. Nonprofit
organizations were not a part of the zeitgeist, yet within the expatriate
community, there was a hunger to give back some of what we had received.

We were living in paradise and we knew it, while just a few hours away
hungry children were going without schooling. Although we have some wonderful
men on our board of directors and my husband Bill has always been a powerful,
inspiring presence, CFC’s nucleus of volunteers remains women. Maybe that’s why
I’ve always considered CFC an organization of such emotion and passion.

While our first school was being built in 2004, we expanded our base in
Singapore by asking women we knew to lunch and showing them photographs of the
Cambodian children. As our organization matured, we encouraged our volunteers
to visit Siem Reap to see for themselves what we were doing and to help out.

We started organizing “Make a Difference” trips, which soon evolved into
much more ambitious projects than bringing donations of school supplies and
clothing to the schools. Groups of families began to build houses in the
surrounding villages and help with construction projects on one of our
campuses. Going deep into a village that most tourists never see and working
side by side with Cambodians to build a home, turn a mud field into a playground
or help serve our free school meals inspired our volunteers.

We were particularly fortunate to have a number of women with extensive
experience in early childhood education. In a country where, in the 1970s, the
Khmer Rouge deliberately singled out and murdered 75 percent of its teachers, these
women created a formal program to “teach the teachers.”

Extraordinary volunteers form the backbone of CFC and keep us motivated.
I have repeatedly witnessed peoples’ inner light magically glow when they walk
into our schoolyards or classrooms, help serve breakfast to young Cambodian
students or congratulate a middle school graduate. People feel it, and they
become committed, not because of anything I could ever say to them, but because
they get what we are trying to accomplish and feel compelled to do something!

Jamie C. Amelio’s book, Graced with
Orange, tells her story of travelling to
Cambodia, adopting two Cambodian girls, founding Caring for Cambodia (CFC),
a nonprofit, non-governmental charitable organization, and changing her own
life and the lives of those around her.